


Shadows of Alkali

by DestielsDestiny



Series: Tripartite Scars [1]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, BAMF Charles Xavier, BAMF Erik Lehnsherr, Blood and Gore, Charles Xavier Needs a Hug, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Cherik Big Bang, Comfort, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Erik needs a hug, Feral Logan (X-Men), Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Logan Needs A Hug, Logan Whump, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Protective Erik, Telepathy, Water
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:53:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26760211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: In the winter of 1989, a torrential flood tore through a remote Albertan wilderness, decimating all that lay in its path. More than three decades have elapsed since that long-ago night, the only reminders a lake deeper than it once was, and an eerie cry that is said to echo along its shores.In a world that is both darker and luckier, Charles and Erik Lehnsherr-Xavier work to save mutant kind, one desperate soul at a time. In their short lives, they have seen much that is cruel, and little that is kind. But when a ghost story leads them into the depths of the Canadian wilderness, nothing could have prepared them for the chilling secret held in the inky depths, of Alkali lake.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr & Logan, Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Logan (X-Men) & Charles Xavier
Series: Tripartite Scars [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949770
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23
Collections: 2020 Cherik Bang





	Shadows of Alkali

**Author's Note:**

> Posting as a WIP, will be complete shortly. Tags will be added as chapters are. Thank you to the Cherik BB Mods!

They met in the rain.

Charles thought this was auspicious. Erik did not.

Charles loved rain. Erik did not.

Erik thought the protest was a waste of time. As he had helped organize it, Charles did not.

Charles thought a twenty-year-old could wear tweed and look distinguished. Erik did not.

It was the 6th of June 2011, the day before Charles’ twenty-first birthday. Giddy with anticipation and terror, he’d been practically skipping between the press of bodies gathered on the courthouse steps, Raven’s mind a bright flicker of blue and red somewhere ahead of him.

He hadn’t been looking where he was going, barely even registered the collision until it was more than half over, the thin shoulders he’d run into already straightening and turning, heather grey eyes flashing emotions in a kaleidoscopic medley of startlement and anger and grief and despair and fierce, fierce determination.

Charles vividly remembers thinking he’d never felt a mind more _alive_.

He remembers with equal vividness Erik’s first thought.

_What the fuck is his problem?_

Charles has often been accused of having no brain to mouth filter. Most of the time, he feels this is an unfair accusation. This was not one of those times, because without so much as blinking, his hand fisted in the leather of the man’s—of _Erik’s_ —coat sleeve, he said this.

“A most apt question, my friend. I’m terribly sorry for stumbling upon you like this, and I don’t mean to be forward, but—” For a moment, for several moments, Charles can _feel_ every scrap of magnetic material for meters, for _kilo_ meters, and he’s suddenly never been so _sure_ in all his young life.

_Would you care to come home with me?_

It’s a terrible pick up line, mentally or verbally. Or would have been, if Charles had meant it like that. Which isn’t to say he didn’t, because from the first moment, he never quite stopped marvelling at how very _gorgeous_ Erik Lehnsherr was.

But in that moment, terror coursing through his veins hard and strong enough to make Charles’ teeth shatter with the shake of it, all he can think, can feel, is the overwhelming realization that this boy, this almost a man with his battered leather jacket and ripped backpack that Charles just _knows_ to contain all his worldly possessions, that _Erik_ is like him.

Powerful, bright, wild, untameable.

Lost, alone, terrified, desperate.

The bruises on Charles’ back, the bruises on Erik’s soul, his powers _keen_ at their symmetry.

_Like calls to like._ Charles has always loved chemistry.

Molecules, attraction, bonding, balance. It’s everything he’s ever never dared to wish for. Everything he’s ever never dared dream of.

Everything….

Erik’s eyes are storms of incredulity and uncertainty, but there is not one iota of fear in them, not as he reaches out a hand, the air practically vibrating with the force of the earth moving to his command.

Charles lets himself be pulled, by metal and blood and magnetism. It should be terrifying. Not exhilarating.

Erik’s voice is as growled, as raw, as desperate in the mental sphere as it had been in the physical. His projection is clumsy and inexperienced, sharp and hard enough that it should hurt like a blow. Not warm Charles to his very soul, like the first caress in a lifetime of loneliness.

_What do you know about me?_

Pain, blood, grief, despair. Power, potential, fierceness, drive.

Experiments and tears, bullets and screams, mothers and fathers, loss and love.

Charles doesn’t even hesitate, the accent he swore he left behind as a preschooler coating the word in a thick blanket of emotion.

“ _Everything._ ”


End file.
